Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. delivered the ninth-grade commencement address for the Cardigan
Mountain School, an elite boarding school for boys grades six through nine, reported the Washington Post.

In Canaan, N.H., Head of School Christopher Day said, the
17th chief justice of the United States would always be known as the dad of
“our Cardigan ­­Cougar Jack.”

You may
remember Jack Roberts from his own moment on the national stage 12 years ago,
when his father was chosen for the Supreme Court. As President George W. Bush
revealed his choice in a formal White House ceremony, John and Jane Roberts
struggled to simultaneously ignore and control the rambunctious boy in the
short-pants ice-cream suit.

Roberts’s commencement address was not publicized in
advance, but it was recorded by the school, uploaded to YouTube and
is slowly gaining attention. Several readers emailed the link to
me. One person wrote, “I’m a Democrat and I can’t stand the guy’s views,
but I was in tears.”

There is nothing about the Supreme Court or the law in the
short speech, although each graduating Cougar received an autographed,
pocket-size Constitution along with his certificate.

Instead, the address was personal, understated and popular
probably because it touched on universal themes, such as a parent’s worry about
whether he or she is making the right decisions for their child.

Driving through the gates after leaving a student at
Cardigan, Roberts said, parents travel a “trail of tears” to an “emptier and
lonelier house.”

Roberts is considered one of the Supreme Court’s better
writers, and his public addresses show a quick wit and professional timing. He
first asked the Cardigan students to turn and applaud their parents and others
who had guided them.

He joked that he would later be able to report that his
speech was “interrupted by applause.”

Success, he reminded them, comes to those who are unafraid
to fail. “And if you did fail, you got up and tried again. And if you failed
again, you got up and tried again. And if you failed again — it might be time
to think about doing something else.”

Roberts said commencement addresses customarily wish
graduates success. He thought it better for them to experience challenges.

“From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be
treated unfairly,” Roberts said, “so that you will come to learn the value
of justice.”

Betrayal “will teach you the importance of
loyalty.” Loneliness will instruct people not to “take friends for
granted.” Pain will cause someone “to learn compassion.”

“I wish you bad luck — again, from time to time — so that
you will be conscious of the role of chance in life,” Roberts said. “And
understand that your success is not completely deserved, and that the failure
of others is not completely deserved, either.”

A commencement speech is supposed to offer “grand advice,”
Roberts said, so his first was to recognize the exalted perch from which they
started — a school with a 4-to-1 student-teacher ratio, where students dine in
jackets and ties, and tuition and board cost about $55,000.

Through his son, Roberts had come to know many of the
students, he said, and “I know you are good guys.”

“But you are also privileged young men, and if you weren’t
privileged when you came here, you’re privileged now because you have been here,”
Roberts said. “My advice is: Don’t act like it.”

He urged them, at their next school, to introduce themselves
to the people “raking the leaves, shoveling the snow or emptying the trash.”
Learn their names, smile and call them by name. “The worst thing that will
happen is you will become known as the young man who smiles and says hello,” he
said.

Another thing:

“You’ve been at a school with just boys. Most of you will be
going to a school with girls,” Roberts said.

Long pause.

“I have no advice for you.”

In his speech, Roberts quoted Socrates and, not
surprisingly, he ended it with the words of “the great American philosopher,
Bob Dylan.”

Roberts has quoted Dylan in judicial opinions, and he’s not
alone. The New York Times a few years ago noted a study that found Dylan the
most-quoted songwriter in judicial opinions, and said Roberts had “opened the
floodgates” by quoting the Bard of Minnesota in a 2008 dissent.

The song he quoted at the commencement speech was “Forever
Young.” Roberts is an unusual parent. Now 62, he and Jane married rather late
in life. Their contemporaries are welcoming grandchildren, while they have two
high-schoolers, Jack and his sister Josephine.

About Matt

An analysis of crime and punishment from the perspective of a former prosecutor and current criminal justice practitioner.
The views expressed on this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions or postions of any county, state or federal agency.